Gay History Course - Richard Dyer 1986
1986
Gay History Course - Richard Dyer 1986:
“I was in a lesbian
and gay history class in 1986 in Birmingham, led by Richard Dyer
(Warwick University) and Jackie Stacy (later Lancaster University).
Everyone knew Richard. They’d never taught it before, so it was an
experiment in putting it together for a WEA course, run at the Lesbian
and Gay Community Centre Aston. The Workers Educational Association (WEA) did the
paperwork. There were a dozen of us, but an interesting opportunity to
think, and the great thought I had, was that our search for lesbian and
gay role models in history is a hard one because if someone was lesbian
and gay it was in a very different way from now, it was something very
transgressive and they would have done their damnest to cover their
tracks, so let's not get wound up about it, but it was interesting to
think about it, rather than think ‘Were they or weren’t they?’”.
Contributed by: Caroline Hutton, 51